The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Sheet 117

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

“Go Ye into All the World!’’

These words of the ascending Savior at the very
outset have the purpose to destroy a wrong idea,
which is also to be found in the minds of many
of our Christians. The false notion is this, that
work among other races and in other countries may
be very desirable and important, but that it comes
after our duty to keep up our own churches at home
and among our own people. Indirectly Christ here
protests against this selfish and restricted point of
view and tells His disciples in no uncertain terms
that He wants His followers not merely to main-
tain the Gospel at home, but to propagate and
spread it in all lands. In giving this command to
His own just as He is to leave them, as His very
last command, He indicates that the essential call-
ing of the Church is to carry the Gospel out “into
all the world,” and that it was founded for the pur-
pose of bringing to all men the blessings of Christ’s
redemption. And it is a matter of life and death
for Christians to recognize this; for it is a matter
of life and death with the Church. Experience
shows that wherever missions are progressing, there
the Church is progressing, and wherever missions
are languishing, there the Church is also losing
ground.

Just as a faithful minister of the Gospel will
not be satisfied with protecting and feeding the
flock entrusted to his care, but will bend all his
energies towards bringing into Christ’s fold those
who do not know Him or have been estranged from
Him, so the Church here in the homeland will not
content herself with feeding and keeping the sheep
within the fold, but will look beyond to the billion
human creatures still awaiting the light of the
Gospel. “Go ye into all the world!” says Christ to
His Church.

But this is not the only thought we found in
these words of the departing Lord. For us to stop
here and go no further would indicate only a partial
and incomplete grasp of our Savior’s last command
to His Church. :

While the very words of Christ reject such argu-
ments as these: “Why go to the extremities of the
world in search of souls? Have we not millions of
souls in our own land, especially in all the large
cities, millions of souls in immediate danger of
perdition? Why trouble about India and China?
Do we not have China right here at our doors?
And aren’t these souls far more accessible and easier
to gather in?” they express to us another thought.

The thought is this: By the establishment of in-
digenous self-propagating, self-supporting, and self-
governing churches in all the world and among all
nations, the preaching of the Gospel and the saving
of souls is best served. More souls will ultimately
be gathered into the fold of Christ by the preaching
of the Gospel “in all the world” than will be the
case if the Church should want to center its mis-
sionary endeavors upon the unchurched of the home-
land. Paul was divinely called by the vision of
the man from Macedonia to go to Greece when he
was of the opinion that the unevangelized souls of
Asia should be his care.

Christ had told His disciples: “Ye shall be
witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all
Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part
of the earth”; and when they tarried unduly in
Jerusalem, He used the persecution of the Jews as
a means of inducing His witness-bearers to establish
centers of Gospel-preaching in Judea and Samaria,
from which mission-stations, in turn, the Gospel
might spread out farther and farther. Thus there
came to be “the Church throughout all Judea and
Galilee and Samaria.” The same persecution that
sent some of the disciples to Samaria and Galilee
sent others to Phenicia, Cyprus, and Antioch, where.
they lifted the banner of the Gospel first among the
Jews and later among the Gentiles. From Antioch
went out Paul and Barnabas and founded churches
in various centers of Asia Minor.

Then came to Paul from the great Head of the
Church, the great Master Missionary, the vision at
Troas, which led him to Europe, there to found
“mission-stations” at Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea,
Athens, Corinth, and other places; and these sta-
tions soon lost their provisional character and be-
came self-propagating and self-supporting congre-
gations, capable of answering all needs and ready
in their turn to become centers from which there
radiated out the saving influence of Christ’s Gospel.

“Foreign” influence soon ceased in the churches
founded by Paul and the other “foreign” mis-
sionaries. These “mission-congregations” furnished
their own pastors and teachers with the help and
encouragement of Paul and others; for these early
builders of the Church knew that until that was
done, their missionary work would not be complete
and the progress of the Gospel in those regions
would be delayed and even hindered. ‘Thus the
aim of Paul and the other early missionaries was
not only to bring the Gospel into various countries,
but as soon as they could they brought into being